techcrunch.com Archives - 22 March 2013, Friday

PayPal phases out donations to non-profits and charities from Singapore accounts starting tomorrow, the 21st of March, and will complete this by the end of the month. This decision is a result of PayPal failing to get a remittance license in the country from the Monetary Authority of ...

Chope aims to connect diners with Singapore’s top restaurants, allowing online reservations via the company’s website Chope.com.sg, mobile apps, and plug-ins for restaurant websites and Facebook pages. Initially launched in Singapore in June of 2011 with just six restaurants, Chope ha...

As market leader in enterprise application software, SAP (NYSE: SAP) helps companies of all sizes and industries run better. From back office to boardroom, warehouse to storefront, desktop to mobile device - SAP empowers people and organizations to work together more efficiently and u...

A Bitcoin brokerage, Bitinstant was hit by hackers who used a bit of social engineering to take control of the company’s DNS servers and ultimately funnel out $12,000 worth of Bitcoins. Hackers first took over the Bitinstant’s DNS domains and then the company’s email servers. They use...

Travelmob Continues Push Into Asian ‘Airbnb’ Market Victoria Ho View Staff Page Follow me on twitter Victoria Ho is a TechCrunch writer based in Singapore. She was previously the technology correspondent for The Business Times in Singapore, and senior writer for ZDNet Asia prior to th...

Russian phone maker Yota Devices will start making its first dual-screen e-ink YotaPhones in Singapore. The company has signed with Hi-P, a manufacturer in the country, to have it mass-produce the devices. Yota’s COO, Lau Geckler, told us that he is also in Singapore to help set up Yo...

PayPal’s wording seems to suggest that users will still be able to receive payments from “sales and trading”, so this shouldn’t hurt individuals selling on eBay (which owns PayPal). However, many of the smaller blogshops in the region are run by individuals, and those transfers are to...

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A Singaporean fashion retail site has secured $2 million (S$2 million) in funding from a government-backed group of VCs. When it launches next month, the e-tailer, called Inverted Edge , will carry a consignment of goods from Asia-Pacific designers, according to CEO, Debra Langley. Th...

We’re pairing with Reddit to allow them to start accepting bitcoin payments for Reddit Gold. This is a large step forward for Bitcoin and for Coinbase, as Reddit is a top 100 site in the U.S. and top 200 site internationally. Reddit CEO Yishan Wong stopped by our offices about a month...

Singaporean media outfit, e27 , has raised about US$615,000 (S$760,000) through a funding round with investors in the region, and plans to expand into Southeast Asia. The round was raised with B Dash Ventures from Japan, Pinehurst Advisors in Taiwan, Ardent Capital in Thailand and Dan...

While the question remains whether or not you should be eating Domino’s pizza at all, a clever service now allows you to pay for your pie with Bitcoins. The service is far from an official Domino’s app and is instead a gateway or broker between the world of pizza and the world of popu...

Samsung and The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf have placed Samsung-branded NFC stickers in all 51 outlets in Singapore. Their marketing campaign runs from 8 February to 7 March, and will reward Samsung NFC-device users with an upsized drink for tapping the poster and Liking Coffee Bean’s Face...

The eight startups, which have each already received an initial investment of $24,000 SGD, have a chance of winning $600,000 SGD or more at the Demo Day which will mark the end of the program. Each startup will get six minutes on stage to showcase their product in front of an audience...

Amazon has just announced a new virtual currency for Kindle Fire owners to use on in-app purchases, app purchases, etc. in the Amazon Appstore. The service will launch in May, at which point Amazon will be giving away tens of millions of dollars worth of Amazon coins to customers. Use...

Uber has brought its premium taxi calling app to Singapore—the first country in Asia to get it. The company has been trialing its service here for the past week. According to users who have tried it out here, it runs Mercedes Benz S-Class sedans, setting it above the usual smaller Toy...

It used to be that building a new TV service was incredibly expensive, as operators had to build out all sorts of new infrastructure to do so. But now with the Internet, operators can launch streaming video services that can reach millions without major new investments in equipment. O...

Online casinos are finding a second chance at life thanks to an alternative digital currency known as Bitcoin. Bitcoins are a completely digital currency managed through a decentralized network of exchanges, based off the research of mysterious computer scientist, Satoshi Nakamoto, wh...

KKBOX , a leading cloud-based music service provider in Asia with 10M registered users, just launched in Malaysia and Singapore. The company’s decision to enter the Southeast Asian marketplace is a sign of how important that region is becoming to Internet companies . By 2014, KKBOX pl...

It’s been a bad week for online security. An “extremely critical ” Ruby on Rails security hole ; a Yahoo! Mail XSS exploit ; and yet another Java 0-day vulnerability . I know, I know, security is hard: still, it’s difficult not to be left with a frustrated throw-up-your-hands “can’t a...

Much like you’d find with companies and businesses using Stripe or PayPal, BitPay provides all of the back-end handling of payments, as well as “buy buttons” for the web. In November, BitPay had 1,300 businesses using their service, but after WordPress decided to adopt Bitcoin to pay ...

It started with an assumption , really. Snapchat , a photo-sharing application that auto-destroys images seconds after being opened, launched in September 2011 with zero media coverage. A homegrown product, built by two Stanford guys, grew to now see over 50 million snaps per day toda...

Former designer Carl Thompson left the fashion industry after years of wrangling with business administration spreadsheets, but hopes his startup TradeGecko will spare other small business owners from the same fate. Its cloud-based inventory and sales management application was develo...

The Wikipedia founder has been spending the past couple of years working on Wikipedia Zero – a project that’s aiming to broaden access to the online encyclopedia to those who don’t own a computer or can’t get access to 3G mobile data – but he says the pace of smartphone adoption in Af...

Founded by a former Microsoft lead, Singapore-based The Stakeholder Company ’s aim is to help organizations maintain their public image by streamlining research with patented software. Using data visualization and algorithms, The Stakeholder Company can help prevent potential PR night...

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension int...

In spite of the commitment the men and women of the U.S. Armed Forces have made to their country, and the lip service paid to veterans and current service men and women during elections season, the state of veteran affairs in the U.S. still leaves much to be desired. As Semil pointed ...

Treasure Data has developed a service that brings high-end analysis to the business or business unit that has traditionally not had the resources to afford a solutions from companies like IBM, Oracle or Teradata. Founder and CEO Hiro Yoshikawa says the total cost of ownership for a da...

Google provides search and advertising services, which together aim to organize and monetize the world’s information. In addition to its dominant search engine, it offers a plethora of online tools and platforms including: Gmail, Maps, YouTube, and Google+, the company’s extension int...

Socialance is a startup out of London that has moved to Santiago, Chile, for six months. The reason for the move is pretty straightforward: Start-Up Chile is giving the company $40,000 without taking any equity stake. And the rent is relatively cheap. Start-Up Chile, which was here at...